Medical News May 22, 2008
Study Finds Big Social Factor in Quitting Smoking
For years, smokers have been exhorted to take the initiative and quit: use a nicotine patch, chew nicotine gum, take a prescription medication that can help, call a help line, just say no. But a new study finds that stopping is seldom an individual decision.
Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals. It also means that people may help many more than just themselves by quitting: quitting can have a ripple effect prompting an entire social network to break the habit.
FAA bans anti-smoking drug Chantix for pilots, air controllers
The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday banned pilots and air traffic controllers from using a popular anti-smoking drug after a study found that it had apparently contributed to auto accidents and other problems that posed risks to both users and others.
The drug, marketed as Chantix, has been hailed as an innovative treatment to help smokers quit. But a study by a medical safety group — also issued Wednesday — linked it to a variety of unusual and serious side effects, including seizures and loss of consciousness, and prompted the FAA to act, agency spokesman Les Dorr said.
Growing arsenal may serve Kennedy
Until a few years ago, patients stricken with cancerous brain tumors had precious few treatment options. There was surgery and radiation and not much else.
But today, as Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his doctors plot his course of care for a malignant glioma, they confront a richer palette of possibilities - due in no small part to Kennedy’s championing of the war on cancer since its dawn in 1971.
Friends are certain that, secluded in Hyannis Port, Kennedy and his family are working the phones and taking a crash course in cancer care, from standard treatments to novel approaches being tested around the country.
Extensive Study Links Preemies and Birth Defects
One of the nation’s most alarming health crises is the growing number of babies born before week 37 of pregnancy. The increase in these preterm live births is behind federal law PL 109-450, or the PREEMIE Act of 2006, which authorizes research and education into the causes and effects of premature birth. On behalf of this act, an extensive study of almost 7 million live births in the United States has revealed that babies born early are at significantly higher risk of being born with major birth defects than babies born at full term.
Uninsured Immigrant Patients Sent Home for Care Against Their Will
Hundreds of legal and illegal immigrants in Arizona are being sent back to their home countries, sometimes against their will, for medical treatment because they lack insurance.
In some cases, the FBI and police, responding to allegations of kidnapping, have been called in to halt such forcible removals, according to patients’ lawyers. In one recent case, a sick baby who is a U.S. citizen born to an illegal immigrant was being transferred by helicopter to a waiting air ambulance for a flight to a hospital in Mexico when Tucson police intervened and brought the child back to the hospital.
Teen Blood Donors More Prone to Complications
Fainting, bruising could keep this important donor pool from giving again, experts warn.
U.S. blood collection centers face a conundrum: At a time of decreasing blood donations, a new study shows that an important source of current and future donations, 16- and 17-year-olds, are more likely to bruise, faint or experience other complications when they donate.
That means this critical pool of young donors may be less likely to give in the future, experts say.
Teen sex study doubts “technical virginity”
A survey examining sexual practices of U.S. teens has undercut the notion that many engage in oral sex rather than intercourse to stay “technically” virgins, researchers said on Tuesday.
The findings, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, were based on answers by 2,271 females and males age 15 to 19 in 2002 in response to a government survey.
The researchers found about 55 percent of the teens said they had engaged in oral sex but that this practice was far more common among those who also had engaged in vaginal sex.
